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One Thousand and One Nights
One Thousand and One Nights (Arabic: Kitab alf laylah wa-laylah; also known in English as The Book of a Thousand Nights and a Night, The Arabian Nights and The Arabian Nights' Entertainment' ) is a collection of short stories connected by a framing device in which a woman, Scheherezade, saves herself from execution by telling a series of entertaining stories to a sultan. The stories themselves belong to a variety of different genres, including adventure, comedy, fantasy, tragedy and erotica. The characters include historical personnages such as the caliph Harun al-Rashid, his poet Abu-Nuwas and his vizier Ja'far al-Barmaki. The stories are drawn from the folklore of India, Persia, Mesopotamia, the Arabian Peninsula and North Afica. The standard Arabic text of One Thousand and One Nights today is the work of a series of anonymous authors writing over a period of more than a thousand years. The framing story of Scheherezade probably originated in 6th century India, later being passed on to Pre-Islamic Persia and then to Arabia. The collection was first referred to as One Thousand and one Nights in the 12th century, although at that time only a few hundred nights' worth of tales were included. The number of stories in the collection gradually increased, reaching its present form in 18th century Cairo. It is clear that One Thousand and One Nights is the work of several hands from the moral attitude taken in the various tales, some take a strict censorious tone whereas others celbrate low-lifes and describe sexual practices which are frowned on by Islam in explicit detail. More tales have been added to One Thousand and One Nights by French and English translators. Today, outside of the Arab world, the best known stories from the collection are "Aladdin", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves' and "The Seven Voyages of Sindbad the Sailor". Although they are genuine arabic folktales, they do not appear in any Arabic-language manuscript of One Thousand and One Nights. Framing device King Shahryar returns home unexpectedly and finds his wife in bed with a slave. He instantly kills them both out of disgust. In order to put the experience behind him, Shahryar goes to visit his brother, however, while hiding in the gardens of his brother's palace, he witnesses his brother's wife taking part in a vast sex orgy with male and female slaves. He and his brother leave the palace and meet a woman who forces them both to have sex with her, threatening to wake up her husband, a genie who will kill them both, if they do not. Convinced that all women are unfaithful by nature, Shahryar decides to take a new virgin wife every day and have her put to death the following morning, therefore not giving the woman time to betray him. After some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for the king to find a new wife, at which point the vizier's daughter Scheherezade volunteers to marry him. On her wedding night, Scheherezade begins to tell the king an entertaining tale but does not finish it, promising to conclude it the following night. The king spares her life so that he can hear the end of the story. That evening, Scheherezade finishes the story and then begins to tell another one, stopping before she comes to the end of that tale. In order to hear the end of the story, the king is forced to postpone her execution for another day. Scheherezade continues to entertain King Shahryar with her unfinished tales for a thousand and one nights, during which time the two have several children. When the thousand and one nights have come to an end, Shahryar has fallen deeply in love with Scheherezade, her life is spared and no other women will be cruelly put to death. Category:Short Stories Category:Famous Category:Classic Category:Fantasy Category:Adventure Category:Comedy Category:Erotic Category:Historical fiction